In the past, conveyors have been formed of passive rollers, mechanically rotated rollers or a combination thereof. The most common types of mechanical drive apparatus utilized to rotate rollers of a conveyer include, but are not necessarily limited to, belt drives, chain drives, and/or shaft drive mechanisms. The use of these types of drive mechanisms generally require relatively large conveyors or structures. In addition, the known types of conveyors or drive mechanisms are difficult to keep clean, as the belts, chains, and/or shaft drive mechanisms frequently accumulate dirt and/or become soiled during use.
The known conveyor systems generally are undesirable for use within a clean room environment. Frequently, clean room specifications are incompatible and do not tolerate the level of dirt and discharged particles associated with the use of a conventional conveyor. Typically, a business having a clean room is required to forgo use of a conveyor within that room due to the cleanliness issues. Further, clean rooms are expensive and have a high cost per unit area. A clean room within a business is preferably of moderate size, and therefore not readily amendable to the use of a relatively large conventional conveyor structure.
A need therefore exists for a new type of conveyor which may be utilized within a clean room environment. Desirably, a clean room conveyor will be of economic size, having an overall compactness and a high ratio of transport tray width to total apparatus width.
Without limiting the scope of the invention a brief description of some of the claimed embodiments of the invention is set forth below. Additional details of the described embodiments of the invention and/or additional embodiments of the invention may be found in the Detailed Description of the Invention below.
A brief abstract of the technical disclosure in the specification is provided as well only for the purposes of complying with 37 C.F.R. 1.72. The abstract is not intended to be used for interpreting the scope of the claims.